Tcl

Extract ZIP Files Without Preserving Directory Paths Using DiscardPaths

See more Zip Examples

This example demonstrates how to use the DiscardPaths property to extract files from a ZIP archive without recreating the stored directory structure.

When DiscardPaths is set to _TRUE_, all extracted files are written directly into the target extraction directory, and any stored ZIP path information is ignored.

This is useful when:

• Flattening ZIP contents into a single directory
• Ignoring stored subdirectory structures during extraction
• Extracting only the files themselves without recreating folders

Suppose the ZIP archive contains:

docs/readme.txt
docs/manual.pdf
images/logo.png

Normally, extracting the ZIP would create:

output/docs/readme.txt
output/docs/manual.pdf
output/images/logo.png

But when DiscardPaths is set to _TRUE_, the extracted files become:

output/readme.txt
output/manual.pdf
output/logo.png

The stored ZIP directory paths are discarded during extraction.

Tcl

load ./chilkat.dll

set success 0

set success 0

set zip [new_CkZip]

# Open an existing ZIP archive.
set success [CkZip_OpenZip $zip "example.zip"]
if {$success == 0} then {
    puts [CkZip_lastErrorText $zip]
    delete_CkZip $zip
    exit
}

# Discard stored ZIP paths during extraction.
# 
# When DiscardPaths = 1, all files are extracted
# directly into the target directory without recreating
# the ZIP directory structure.
CkZip_put_DiscardPaths $zip 1

# Extract all files to the output directory.
# 
# Even if the ZIP contains:
# 
#     docs/readme.txt
#     docs/manual.pdf
#     images/logo.png
# 
# The extracted files become:
# 
#     c:/output/readme.txt
#     c:/output/manual.pdf
#     c:/output/logo.png
# 
set numFilesUnzipped [CkZip_Unzip $zip "c:/output"]

if {$numFilesUnzipped < 0} then {
    puts [CkZip_lastErrorText $zip]
    delete_CkZip $zip
    exit
}

puts "Number of files extracted = $numFilesUnzipped"

CkZip_CloseZip $zip

puts "Files extracted successfully."

delete_CkZip $zip